Review Lifestrips: Be Creative!

Rating:

Become comically creative with Lifestrips

Lifestrips uses Lifecards visual engine to enable you to freely pan and zoom the strip while you are creating it. Photos can be translated, rotated, and zoomed within the panels of the strips by sliding your fingers on the screen or pinching.

Features:

– Strip templates with 1 to 4 photos
– Control scale, position and rotation of photos
– Advanced visual engine allows you to freely pan and zoom the strip while you work on it.
– 8 different balloons
– Facebook upload support
– Save strip to finish it later
– Basic image filters for photos
– Automatic save and restore of strip when you exit and reenter the application

I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was for me to quickly create an impressive cartoon strip featuring some random pictures that I had on my iPod Touch. While the instructions within the app are clear, expansive and helpful, like most people I just jumped right in.

The first task is to select a template from the over 20 that are available. From a simple 1 shot frame to twin, triple and even four shot frames there are plenty of options for all requirements. For my first strip I used a simple 3 pane frame and moved onto the next step of adding the pictures to each of the frames.

Selecting pictures is simply done by clicking on the appropriate frame and selecting the picture you want from your saved pictures folder. Once selected you can zoom, rotate and reposition the picture, however, this is only the start. Clicking on the Filter option allows you to add multiple effects to the selected picture from a sepia or comic effect to sharpening or inverting the image or a combination of them all!

Once you’ve added and adjusted all your pictures you can start adding your speech and thought bubbles to the comic strip. Clicking the Add button brings up the 8 built in options for adding text to the images, and it’s so simple. After adding the bubble just double tap to enter text, or with the bubble selected change the style, font, size, text color even the outline of the bubble itself.

The great thing about this app is that not only does it have a great range of features and options to get your comic strip just as you want, it’s also really easy to use.

Once you’ve completed your masterpiece, which for me took no more than 5 minutes, you can either save the file within Lifestrips, to your photo album or directly upload it to your Facebook account. I did have a couple of issues where the text would not be saved in the bubble correctly but it’s a minor issue.

If you’ve ever wanted to create your own comic strip or simply want to add some creativity to the pictures you’ve taken on your iPhone you can’t go wrong with Lifestrips.